


Shelter

by cassandor



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, POV Alternating, Parent-Child Relationship, Pre-Canon, the war part of star wars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:45:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21814312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassandor/pseuds/cassandor
Summary: A shelter is not necessarily a home.
Relationships: Bodhi Rook & Other(s), Cassian Andor & Other(s), Galen Erso & Jyn Erso & Lyra Erso, Jyn Erso & Saw Gerrera
Comments: 7
Kudos: 28





	Shelter

A year after the Big Move, Mama and Papa teach Jyn a new Game.

The game is called Hide and Seek. Jyn insists she knows how to play - she'd plenty of experience with it before the Big Move. She remembers being little-r and hiding in the closet, wrapped up in the faint scent of Papa's cologne until Mama scooped her out with a smile.

Mama sighs, and looks over at Papa.

It's nice, Jyn thinks, to have Papa around. Before the Big Move, he brought her new toys every time he saw her after a long stretch of being away. She had a lot of toys. But Jyn could only fit some of them in her too-small backpack. Now they're all obviously Not New in a way that would've made the other children laugh at her. (Except Stormy.)

But Papa is always around, and the neighbour children aren't.

The tradeoff was, Jyn thinks as Papa kneels in front of her, worth it.

"You're right, Jyn. But this game is slightly different." He inhales, looking thoughtful. "Yes. We should give it a different name, then, so they don't get mixed up. Not for Jyn, bright little one she is, but for me."

Mama nods solemnly, a contrast to the wavering smile on Papa's face. Jyn nods, too.

"This game is called... Hide." 

* * *

There is a rug in the middle of the living room, if one could call it that.

The living room, that is. The rug was a fine rug, Bodhi thinks, long ago before Nivi spilled half a cup of chai on it.

"It was already fading," Nivi tells him a little sheepishly. "I think the chai stain adds character." _Adds character _was his big sister's response to everything that went wrong, including the time he'd crashed her speeder. He was too small, then, to know that the gear was in reverse. He knows better now, obviously. Nivi pats him on the head. 

The living room is cramped, like most things on Jedha. Cramped and, at one point, full of life. But Abbu is gone, along with all their father's friends. The only thing left of them is the rug on the floor.

The chairs on the rug used to look so tiny, with all these adults sitting in them, overflowing with big words and even bigger personalities. Bodhi was never allowed to hear what they talked about. All he'd heard were muffled voices coming from the other side of his door while he tried to sleep with his head under the covers. And once, a faint thud, followed by sympathetic murmurs and one loud guffaw.

Nivi had spilled the chai meant for Aunt Ritsvii (who was not their actual aunt) all over the rug.

"_That one's no good for serving chai_," Nivi repeats what Uncle Otsav (also not their actual uncle) had said that night. _"But I hear she'd make a fine rebel pilot."_

"He really said that?" Bodhi asks for the hundredth time since she'd first told him the story.

"Yes," Nivi says thoughtfully, looking at the rug - no, at what lies under it - and smiles. "Yes, yes he did." 

* * *

Papá told Cassian he'd get used to the sirens eventually.

"They're just drills, Cassi. They're meant to keep us safe."

Still, Cassian is never happy when he's woken by the shrieking sirens. How many times would they have to practice these drills, anyways? What was the likelihood of a factory going up in smoke, or there being a big chemical spill? (And what were the chances of such a disaster reaching their secluded barrio?)

"He asks so many questions," Papá says, but he is smiling.

"Then answer them, Jer." Mamá crouches, holding out Cassian's coat. He stops rubbing at his sleepy eyes and sticks his arms in the holes. "He will keep asking until he understands." 

Papá chuckles. "Half the time, I don't understand, myself." 

Mamá arches an eyebrow at him as she turns Cassian around and zips up the coat. "So our five year old son is asking questions you haven't asked?"

Papá touches his son's nose and Cassian wrinkles his face at the coldness of his finger. "Perhaps my son is smarter than I am. I can only hope." 

* * *

Nivi moves the living room chairs while Ammi warns her not to scratch the floor.

Bodhi lifts the rug. Crawling, he rolls it across the floor to reveal the faintest outline of a trap door. Abbu used to put things in there, Bodhi knows. Documents and big boxes with contents that clanged ominously when the uncles carried them.

There's nothing in there now except for webs and dust that makes Bodhi cough as he climbs down the ladder. 

"Ammi took everything out," Nivi whispers as she follows him down, sliding the door shut behind her. "She sold what she could and burnt the rest." 

"Why?" Bodhi asks.

"'Cause it was rebel stuff." Bodhi's eyebrows shoot up into his hairline.

"Really?" he begins to ask, but is interrupted by a loud sneeze.

"I told you two to be _quiet_ in there!" Ammi shouts, from the other side of the door. "You'd be killed, if this wasn't a drill. The rebels have ears sharper than mine!" 

Bodhi sniffs. Nivi mutters something about Imperials being more likely to hunt children.

* * *

Soon enough, the drills stop as Fest settles into its new normal. Confederate ships fly in and out of rocky mountain ports, and droids become a common sight, just like the crowds of overall-clad workers headed to the new factories on the morning shift. There are still alarms, early in the morning, but they ring differently in every household. 

Mamá rises to their sound, and most days she's already leaving by the time Cassian starts to stir. It's Papá that stays behind to watch Cassian. He feeds him breakfast while Cassian reads aloud from a cracked datapad screen. To Cassian, the days are idyllic, passing as he spends the morning studying Basic or math while Papá mends droids for the neighbours. He learns to slice before he can write with a stylus, and he can list the differentiating features between every generation of battle droid. Later, Cassian will value these skills, and the memories of playing with friends in the snow will have melted away, considered useless in the mind of a spy. 

But as a child, those hours in the snow until Mamá returned were the best part of every day. Then in the afternoon, Papá would leave for the outskirts to help the neighbours build on the outskirts of the city.

"It's a bunker," Papá explains.

"Why?" Cassian asks, not looking up from the mouse droid he's building in the snow. 

"Well, if the sirens go off, we need somewhere to go that's safe, just in case whatever's happened in the factories can spread out here. Nobody's bothered to build anything, so we're doing it ourselves." Jeron does not mention the looming shadow of the Republic over their heads and the threat of invasion, so Cassian pays it as much attention as the snowflakes melting on his gloves. 

* * *

There's a knock at their door on a cold summer evening, two weeks after Nivi wrote her Academy entrance exams.

"Go," Ammi says, and Bodhi's already moving. The one thing he's good at, he thinks, are drills. He doesn't have to think, he just lets muscle memory guide him. Like flying, almost, and rolling up the rug is just as terrifying. He pulls at the trap door, the slickness of sweat on his palms making his hands slip across the surface. He grunts, digging his nails in to pop it open, which is when he realizes -

"Nivi," he says, and she turns. "Aren't you coming?"

"No," she replies, quiet enough that Ammi, fretting in the kitchen, wouldn't be able to hear. "You hide. I'll stay a bit longer." 

"But," he starts, and then he's shushed.

"Go, Bo," she says quietly.

Bodhi reluctantly closes the hatch behind him. 

He waits, and waits, and waits so long that even now, after he'd swept the compartment clean of cobwebs, his lungs tighten and draw rapid breaths.

When Ammi opens the door, her eyes are narrowed, the fabric of her shawl pulled close to her mouth. Nivi is nowhere to be found.

* * *

When the sirens blare low and loud that morning, Cassian doesn't make a fuss of getting out of bed. He rises, dresses, and is already waiting at the door when Mamá arrives in a flurry of snow. If only Papá were alive to see it.

"It's the Empire," she says by way of greeting and explanation, snowflakes falling off the shoulders of her coat as she inspects the contents of Cassian's schoolbag, packed with rations and supplies instead of books. She pats it, satisfied but uneasy, then stands as he zips it back up. "Hurry along, now. To the bunker."

"The Empire?" Cassian struggles to keep up, boots sinking into the snow as the sirens continue their ominous rumble. The Empire was already on Fest, had been for several years, now, the steady march of clone troopers replacing the clank-clank-clank of battle droids. These days, the only white on Fest was not the muted grey-brown of snow, but the shine of plastoid armour.

Mamá's starting to reply, Cassian thinks, when the first round of explosions begin.

* * *

Jyn waits in the bunker, alone, with only the sliver of light glinting off her blade for company. She spins it in her hand, each twirl a passing second, and wonders if this game is Hide, or Hide and Seek. 

Saw never played Hide. 

**Author's Note:**

> Happy 3 years to this incredible movie!


End file.
